Interesting results. I would have thought that there would be more tear.

I have some very old oak - fine grain white oak and I want to see
how it works. Oak is normally open grain and tears... If it does, I'll
try this trick.

Martin

On 10/30/2016 5:53 PM, graham wrote:
I was turning a bowl this afternoon from a piece of fruit wood (in the
basement for 20 years and species unknown). I shear scraped the outside
and got an generally good finish but there were some areas of fine
tear-out that even light shear cuts would not remove. So I thoroughly
wetted the surface to make the fibres swell in those areas and then gave
a light shear-scrape while it was still wet. The waste was mostly in the
form of a slurry rather than shavings and the finish was superb over the
tricky areas.
Graham